sharps (pot au feu)

i am sitting in a darkened cinema rolling a spiky metal ringup and down my fingerspressing in sharpto stop myself scratchingsigils into skin again it’s history          soup that has been simmeringthrough generations...

Drifting

It's the weekend again and the rain lashes the windows.I'd had some thought of weeding the garden, but the windHas other ideas. These artificial distinctions we makeBetween workday and rest — we’ve been home for 63 daysAnd one blends into another. I could have...

The 6th Great Extinction

There are no platypus under the bridge again today. It’s the fourth week in a row and we all ask each other Instead of ‘hello’, “Seen any platypus?” — hopeful And each time, it’s “Not today… not for a while…” None of us know whether it’s...

POETRY

Paper and dust

Paper and dust

Their shelves have always held mystery. Resist the urge to touch — cloth and paper and paint. I am close enough to breathe in Catullus and all his earthly urges, now sealed and almost erudite; So many spines here, leather and lust, dirt and distress. From Alexandria...

Numb in the whirlwind

Numb in the whirlwind

I stand, arms outstretched as everything i know whirls around me Smashed into driftwood and debris by the tornado of circumstance They say justice is blind but I can’t help feel she’s blindfolded right now, Held to ransom as random injustice rains down on us —...

Unspoken

Unspoken

Inspired by a Tumblr post I now can't find... if you recognise the story, please contact me! There’s something about scarlet cushions and 1940s jazz, Dark bars and tiny crystal goblets filled with cloying golden wine And a promise of desire that draws me in every...

Precious

Precious

These are moments that you treasure, just sitting of a sunset, Shoulder to shoulder as you reminisce. And whether it’s Those memories of women’s decisions, the baby borne or the Journey halted, the intimacies and the violations, or whether It’s gasping hysterics...

Raw

Raw

(With thanks and gratitude to Robert Borden) 1. 2017 was a good year for fear, a good year for screaming Not like some other good American years but it slid out of A year of celebrity death and televised suffering that we were all Only too happy to see the back of And...

Stories

Seattle, home of grunge

Seattle, home of grunge

Went to Seattle for a handfasting (friends of Doug's). He took photos of the handfasting and all that jazz. I saved up my camera work for the next day when we went exploring the city and especially the Experience Music Project, which I'd first written about when it...

San Gregorio

San Gregorio

Last night, Doug and I took his new toy for a wander over the mountain, on winding roads through redwood forests and oak and something called chaparral (which I'd never heard of). We eventually followed San Gregorio creek down to where it met the sea, watched the...

Burning Man!

Burning Man!

Photo evidence of my first Burning Man. More photos after the link. Art people on the playa. These are flip books to make poetry with in the Center Camp. Art cars: this one's a functioning steam-propelled vehicle. Another amazing art car: a Victorian house on wheels....

Gaudi & the Font Majica

Gaudi & the Font Majica

For whatever reason, I didn't diarise the Gaudi or the fountains, or the amazing chocolate shop, Cacao Sampaka. I did take photos though. ^^ The Angel & the Devil in La Rambla ^^ Gaudi liquid architecture ^^ Font Majica ^^ Font Magica, lights & music ^^ Like a...

Exposure

Exposure

So here I am on the other side of the world, and I walk into the Institute of Contemporary Culture... and there, on a poster, is a photo of me and Simon and Christina and Catherine naked in Melbourne one rainy morning in 2001. Of course, you can't tell it's us,...

Politics

Place

Place

There used to be water in California; snowmelt rushing through ravines to coalesce laughingly as lakes and lagoons and other summer indulgences. That was long away and far ago, in some strange before time when the land wasn’t riven with cracks and the heat had some...

And you are listening

It is 10.40pm in Paris and they have taken hostages at the Bataclan It is 11pm and somewhere on Facebook a kid posts: "they are killing everybody. one by one." It is 4pm in Melbourne and my friend is giving birth to a little boy named Clancy but I don't know that yet....

Another rape in cyberspace

The Charlotte Dawson case, which has now resulted in her hospitalisation, says a lot about the way that women are treated in social media spaces and the divergent tactics that are used to address the issue.

I’m a feminist and I support Wikileaks

Whenever I've raised the complex interactions I see around the arrest of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, I find myself mired in defending my position. If I say I support his work and that I welcome the new world where governments cannot collude in...

Baxter Detention Centre Protest, Easter 2005

Baxter Detention Centre Protest, Easter 2005

At Easter, it has become traditional to converge at the Baxter Detention Centre near Port Augusta in South Australia to protest against the inhumane mandatory detention of refugees in Australia in contravention of our international obligations. There were about 500 of...